An Urge to Retire

In Washington, D.C., last week, resignations were handed in by two university heads whose recent firings of outspoken faculty members had provoked demonstrations for academic freedom.

After seven years as president of Howard University, James M. Nabrit Jr. stepped out at a time of unprecedented strife on the nation's largest Negro campus (enrollment: 11,000, about 12% white). Though Nabrit a generation ago was a pioneering court room lawyer in the civil rights movement, he found himself branded a reactionary last spring when a spree of black-power incidents struck his campus. Militant pacifists booed Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey off a stage, burned Nabrit and Hershey in effigy, boycotted classes for a day.

Nabrit charged 18 students with staging "disruptive" campus incidents, then waited for the close of the semester to oust them and five sympathetic faculty members. On the day his resignation was announced, Nabrit was listening to protests about the firings from representatives of the American Association of University Professors. Nabrit is 66, would not have been required to retire for another year.

At Catholic University of America, Bishop William J. McDonald, 63, announced that he would quit as rector (chief administrative officer) in November. McDonald was at the helm last April when a faculty-led strike closed the school for five days, and forced the reinstatement of the Rev. Charles E. Curran, 33 (TIME, April 28), who had been fired because of his liberal views on birth control. The revolt, latest in a long series of incidents involving academic freedom at C.U., did not sit well with the cardinals and archbishops who serve as the school's trustees. McDonald, well known as an ecclesiastical conservative, tersely said that his resignation stemmed from a decision made "many years ago."

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